We’ve already recorded a bunch of episodes ready to go, and this year’s gonna be rocking.

In this action-packed start to 2010, Steve and I recount the highs and lows of 2009’s poddy, send a whole bunch of schnouncements out, and detail just a few of the upcoming exciting new features for the poddy in 2010.  This intro episode gets the ball rolling in true, Pilgrim’s Podcast rambling fashion.  Enjoy!

Listen:

Related posts:

1. Pilgrim’s Podcast 2010
2. Pilgrim’s Podcast #21: Counselling Series Wrap-Up, A Multitude of Shoutouts, and Speeches
3. Pilgrim’s Podcast #4: Ruth Lee, RICE, EQUIP and Shnouncements!

“Jesus goes to Martha’s, Mary’s, and Lazarus’ home for dinner.  Martha serves as a starter (to use the English term) raw carrots with garlic dip (a yet to be discovered American culinary invention).  Jesus ate the carrots.  Who was it who ate the carrots?  Who was the acting subject?  It was the Son of God who ate the carrots.  Was he eating the carrots as God or as man?  Obviously, he was eating the carrots as man.  God as God cannot eat carrots for he does not have teeth, a mouth, a stomach etc.  Lazarus also ate the carrots, but unfortunately he ate a rotten carrot and died of food poisoning.  Four days later Jesus returned and raised Lazarus from the dead.  Who was it who raised Lazarus from the dead?  It was the Son of God who raised Lazarus from the dead.  But did he raise Lazarus from the dead as God or as man?  At this juncture there is silence among the students.  Inevitably the more pious students first break the silence by saying that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead ‘as God.’  I remain silent.  Then some brave soul, usually a girl, will hesitantly whisper, almost inaudibly, ‘as man.’  That is precisely the correct answer.

Within the Incarnation the Son of God never does anything as God.  If he did, he would be acting as God in a man.  This the Incarnation will never permit.  All that Jesus did as the Son of God was done as a man - whether it was eating carrots, or raising someone from the dead.  He may have raised Lazarus from the dead by his divine power or, better, by the power of the Holy Spirit, but it was, nonetheless, as man that he did so.  Similarly, the Son of God did not suffer as God in a man, for to do so would mean that he was not a man.  The Son of God suffered as a man.” (pg 205).

Ironically, as I’ll go on to show in another post (sometime… I’ve been pretty slack lately!), protecting God’s impassibility is done in order to uphold Christ’s humanity – particularly his solidarity in our weakness!

Oh, here’s an excerpt from the excellent book which this quote was taken from.

Related posts:

1. New Themelios Out Now!
2. John Frame on Preaching
3. Pastoral Care Resources

This is quite a monumental subject, and something which I admit to be quite the learner about.  Yet, I think this doctrine of the Extra Calvinisticum is of crucial importance for Christology.

Usually attributed to John Calvin (by the Lutherans due to the debate on the ‘Real Presence’ in the Lord’s Supper), this is a very important and orthodox doctrine that I’ve been reading about lately.  Basically it states that in the Incarnation, God the Son retained his divine properties such as omnipresence, omniscience and immensity, and therefore Christ was not confined within the limits of a creaturely human. In other words, Christ was not less than divine nor less than human.  Later reformed theologians used the dictum: finitum non capax infinitum (the finite cannot grasp, or exhaust the infinite) to describe this.  The reverse is also true: the infinite God grasps finite human nature in the Incarnation.

One great passage in Calvin where this is explained is here:

“For even if the Word in his immeasurable essence united with the nature of man into one person, we do not imagine that he was confined therein.  Here is something marvelous: the Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that, without leaving heaven, he willed to be borne in the virgin’s womb, to go about earth, and to hang upon the cross; yet he continuously filled the world even as he had done from the beginning.” Institutes II.13.4

As E. David Willis shows in his excellent study on the Extra Calvinisticum, this doctrine has undeniable orthodox catholicity – so much so, that Willis thinks a better term might be the Extra Catholicum! We find this doctrine in Cyril, Athanasius, Augustine, John of Damascus, Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas and the reformed orthodox in the 16th and 17th centuries.  I’ve listed these quotes and others, here.

One area which this doctrine is helpful is in protecting against kenotic theologies which claim that in the Incarnation, Christ emptied himself of divine properties such as omniscience or omnipresence.  This seems to be a mistaken exegesis of Philippians 2, where the reference to ‘emptying’ is taken to refer to Christ losing particular attributes, rather than referring to the general movement of descent from heaven to earth as a man.  The Extra protects Christ’s divinity by insisting that whilst fully man, Christ nevertheless filled the universe with His presence.  And although His glory was veiled within human flesh, he was still nevertheless utterly glorious as the fully divine second person of the Trinity.  Paul Helm describes this as follows:

“The Logos, as Calvin liked to say, in true Chalcedonian fashion, ‘remains what He was’; what happened was that at the Incarnation, while continuing to exist eternally in the form of God, the logos, in Incarnation, took the form of a servant.”  Calvin’s Ideas, p64.

The other area where the Extra Calvinisticum is very important is with respect to Christ as God’s revelation.  Without a doubt, Christ is the true revelation of God.  He is the true image of God (Col. 1) and the exact imprint of God (Heb. 1).  There is no other way to know the Father except through Him (John 14:6).  Yet, the Extra Calvinisticum supports revelation extra Christ – for instance, Scripture and General Revelation.  In other words, as Muller puts it:

“Christ, the God-man, the center of everything we can say about salvation, is not the center of everything we can say about God, and not even the rule for everything that we can say about the Word in its work of creation, providence and revelation.  The extra-Calvinisticum allows, therefore, both for a genuine revelation of God in nature, accomplished by the Word extra Christum or, as the fathers would have said, the Logos asarkos, and a special revelation of God focused soteriologically upon but not restricted to the person of Christ, the Logos ensarkos.”  Richard Muller, The Barth Legacy: New Athanasius or Origen Redivivus? A Response to T.F. Torrance.

As I see it, the Extra Calvinisticum brings great and helpful benefits to our understanding and love of God.  Firstly, it protects Chalcedonian Christology by preserving the humanity and deity of Christ against kenotic Christologies which empty Christ of His true divinity.  Secondly, it preserves General Revelation by admitting true revelation beyond the flesh of Christ (of course, sadly the unregenerate man suppresses the truth of God’s revelation as per Romans 1).  Thirdly, this brings some sense to the confusions surrounding the term ‘Christocentric.’  It insists upon a Soteriological Christocentrism whereby Christ is the beginning and center of Salvation (which is historically orthodox), yet banishes the idea of a Principial Christocentrism which insists that Christ (not Scripture) is the beginning, ground and center of all doctrine of God (which is not historically orthodox).  The danger of the wrong-headed idea of a Principial Christocentrism, Muller says is that: ”… it becomes a Christological reductionism, a ‘Christmonism,’ as some have labelled it.”  Muller, The Barth Legacy. p691.

All in all, I think that the Extra Calvinisticum is a wonderfully catholic and orthodox doctrine which frees us up from dangerous ideas about God, and allows us to rejoice in the greatness of our divine Saviour’s Incarnation which led to His gracious redemption of us!

Related posts:

1. Christ and the Decree: Calvin
2. Calvin’s Contemporaries: Bullinger, Musculus & Vermigli
3. Christology and Carrots

8/8/99: On another subject: what is preaching, anyway? I don’t mean the preaching of the OT prophets, or Jesus, or Peter at Pentecost, or Paul on his missionary journeys. I mean the preaching we hear every Sunday morning. You see, this “ordinary” preaching is not quite the same as the others, though to be sure there are similarities. The preaching of the prophets, apostles, and Jesus, was specially inspired of God, for one thing. Ordinary preaching is not, or at least doesn’t have to be. And the apostolic preaching was usually out in the open, not in a gathered worship service of God’s people. And its themes are almost entirely judgment and/or grace. It is evangelistic in thrust. When we gather in church, of course, we need to hear the Gospel again and again; but we are not in the position of those in the marketplace. We have believed, and we need to hear what Scripture says about living the Christian life.

All the Reformational emphasis on the power of the preached Word seems to transfer what Scripture says about the marketplace preaching of the apostles to the ordinary preaching of the church. Reformation theology built a huge theological construct on this equation: the Second Helvetic Confession even said, “the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.” We have spent a lot of time talking about heralding and so on. But were the Reformers and we right to make such an equation between the extraordinary and the ordinary? Maybe so. But the issue hasn’t been studied much, and somebody ought to do it.

Some have found the origins of ordinary preaching in the Synagogue, or in the great occasion when Ezra expounded the Law to the returning exiles and the Levites “gave the sense.” So the essence of this kind of preaching is biblical exposition. This is closer to the mark, in my view. We don’t know if the church followed the synagogue pattern in the very beginning of its existence. 1 Cor. 14 looks like something rather different. Eventually, things did settle down, and something like a Christian synagogue did develop. But note that if this is the model we are to follow, we cannot bring into ordinary preaching all that Scripture says about preaching being the saving power of God, being a heralding of redemption, about the preacher as God’s special representative, and so on. There may something in all that, but it needs to be shown.

So far as I can see at the moment, Scripture never commands us to preach sermons in church, or in synagogue either, for that matter. At least the kind of sermons we are accustomed to. 1 Cor. 14:26 does refer to a “lesson” (didache) taught in the worship service, but it says very little about the character of that teaching. In general, Scripture doesn’t tell us anywhere to preach on a single text (even the inspired preaching of the apostles fails to do this), or to have just one sermon per service. It doesn’t tell us that every sermon has to be by an ordained officer, and by only one. It doesn’t forbid drama as a means of communication. It doesn’t tell us we must always preach on the history of redemption as opposed to “moralistic” ethics. It doesn’t appoint the preacher to be an official herald of the coming age. Indeed, it doesn’t tell us much of anything. Thus it seems to me that we have great freedom.

I do think we should have sermons in church, simply because believers and visitors alike need to hear God’s Word. But I think there can be a simplicity about ordinary preaching. It does not have to be something dreadfully complicated that requires enormous theological sophistication. It’s simply teaching one another what the Bible says. So it seems to me that the teaching of preaching can be simple too.

There are many maxims in homiletical texts. But in my estimation, there are only four rules: (1) make it biblical, (2) make it clear, (3) apply it correctly to the congregation, (4) make it interesting. I wish we could focus on these rules in the teaching of homiletics. But instead, the students have to focus on the Reformation theology of preaching and to master the biblical theology of texts. (Why BT and not ST or ET?) They learn methods of preparing sermons that require maybe 40 hours for each message. Their applications are not very practical, usually not much more than “Isn’t Christ great?” and ”Repent and believe.” (As a bottom line, that hardly fulfills the promise of profundity made by the Redemptive-Historical method.) And most students never do learn to communicate. So many Reformed Christians turn to the Grahams, Swindolls, and others, people who were taught preaching (usually by a mentor) without all the theological elaboration.

Perhaps some of our failure here stems from our pride, our wanting to be seen as preaching more profoundly than mere fundamentalists, and with much better scholarship. And as God’s poetic justice would have it, the result is often less rich, less interesting, less penetrating, and less clear than many mere radio preachers. We should be able to do better, perhaps by setting our sights lower.

Related posts:

1. Tim Keller on Preaching
2. Pilgrim’s Podcast #9: Alfred Olwa, Revival in Uganda, Festo Kivengere and Preaching Tips for Young Punks!
3. Pilgrim’s Podcast #11: Andrew Katay, Missional Church Planting, Transformational Preaching and Tips for Young Preachers

We’d also love to hear your thoughts: what’s good? what’s bad? who should we interview? should we make the episodes longer or shorter? should we have intro/outro music in any other genre than hiphop!? …. We’d love to hear anything on how we can better help people!

Here’s the breakdown of stats for 2009 – we had 6859 total downloads! Crazy.

Related posts:

1. Pilgrim’s Podcast Season 2 is here!
2. Pilgrim’s Podcast #3 – Newtown Drop-in, Social Action and Prizes!
3. Pilgrim’s Podcast #14: Dr. Ashley Null, Denominations in a Post-Denomination Age, Thinking about Worship, and being a Lapdog for Jesus!

Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575) was Zwingli’s successor in Zurich and produces three massive theological works: The Decades, The Compendium of Christian Religion, and the Second Helvetic Confession.  Bullinger develops a strong covenant-promise motif through his theology stemming from his exegesis of the protoevangelion of Genesis 3.  Christ becomes the mediator of this covenant of grace and executes the decree.  Bullinger has a functional Christology drawn not from the Anselmic theory as Calvin does, but rather from the historical goal of covenant promises.  With this historical-redemptive emphasis, it is no wonder then, that Bullinger’s doctrine of predestination is set within the soteriological locus of the Second Helvetic Confession.  Since election is executed in Christ, the Mediator, reprobation is outside of Christ and its causal explanation must be passed over in silence.

Wolfgang Musculus (1497-1563)  was a highly reputed exegete and theologian who taught theology in Bern and produced commentaries on books of the Bible, and his Loci Communes in 1560.  He emphasised a General Covenant between God and creation, and a Special Covenant between God and the elect, and Christ was the Mediator of the Special Covenant.   So concerned with the historical effecting of God’s salvation was he, that he placed the atonement prior to Christology in his Loci.  He follows Calvin in utilising Anselm when formulating his functional Christology, and points out that Christ is the elect whereby he is the chosen head of the chosen people.  He includes a careful, and scholastic discussion of election and foreknowledge which produces less of a causal rigor than Calvin’s discussion of election.

Peter Martyr Vermigli (1500-1562) was an Oxford lecturer whose work was arranged and published posthumously by Robert Masson in 1576.  Interestingly, Masson arranged Vermigli’s Loci Communes as per Calvin’s 1559 Institutes.  Vermigli’s Christology follows the Reformed functional tradition of not separating the person and work of Christ.  On predestination, Vermigli’s work is completely different in approach to Calvin, but produces the same results.  Vermigli employs scholastic distinctions between absolute necessity (necessitas consequentis) and necessity of consequence (necessitas consequentiae) to differentiate between what we might know as primary and secondary causes.  This distinction produces the main difference between Vermigli and Calvin with the term ‘predestination.’  Because Vermigli accepts what Calvin rejects (a ‘permissive will’ in God), he would apply the term ‘predestination’ to the work of God in the salvation of the elect, and not to the passing over of the reprobate.   This highlights the fact that the concept of a ‘double decree’ in predestination was not simply a 17th century discussion, but an early orthodox one.

Epilogue:

Muller finished this ‘Early Orthodox’ section with an epilogue comparing Calvin to these three contemporaries.  Although there are 4 different approaches here, it is seen that the predestination of individuals is intimated related to Christology.  All four have a functional Christology, Calvin and Musculus share an Anselmic motivation, and Musculus and Bullinger involve a covenant of grace.

What can we learn from all this?

1. Whereas Calvin and Vermigli seem more oriented towards causality than Musculus and Bullinger, there is no motivation to undercut any Christological concerns.   Thus, causal emphasis does not necessarily imply Christologial concern.
2. Vermigli’s distinctions pertaining to God’s will would prove to be more influential than Calvin’s (eg., the uptake of decretive/permissive will).  Also, Vermigli’s infralapsarian position and scholastic distinction would carry more influence.  Thus, other theologians are also crucial to the development of Reformed doctrine.
3. It is to the definition of the doctrine, rather than simply the placement of the doctrine that we must look when examining the causal rigor of the system.   Thus, placement of a doctrine shouldn’t be the only factor of investigation.

Muller finishes the discussion of the early orthodox development of predestination, describing it as follows:

“…the doctrine as expressed by these thinkers was more than simply a scriptural doctrine: it was an Augustinian doctrine, argued as Augustine had argued it, as the divine resolution of the problem of original sin and human inability; and, likewise, it was a doctrine drawn perhaps grudgingly from the schoolmen, argued in the language of the scholastics as a doctrinal issue hedged by definitions of necessity and contingency, primary and secondary causality.”

Related posts:

1. Christ and the Decree: Calvin
2. Calvin was not a “Calvinst”….
3. The Extra Calvinisticum

Now, the first thing to note is that Peter uses the word destruction (And ‘perish’, Greek: απωλεια, απωλλυμι) not to describe the fate of the earth, but to describe the fate of the ungodly (c.f., 2 Peter 2:1,3). The NIV version includes ‘destruction’ in verse 12, but that is better translated ‘dissolved’ as per the ESV (see also the next post: Fire). Thus, in 2 Peter 3, destruction is mainly concerned with those who reject Christ.

V7 “But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist have been stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.”
v9: “but [God] is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
v16 “There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction.”

Now, on the surface it would seem that Peter is saying that unbelievers are utterly annihilated on the Day of the Lord. That they don’t experience an eternity of conscious punishment, but are simply destroyed. That the orthodox doctrine of hell is wrong because people simply cease to exist. And this is a view of hell which is growing in popularity in certain evangelical circles. And you can sort of understand why – after all, with a contemporary understanding of love, it’s hard to square with a God who is love. Annihilation is much more palatable when trying to correlate theological concepts to contemporary thought.

Yet, I’m not so sure that Peter teaches that destruction means obliteration unto non-existence. You see, to prove this you’d need, among other things, to maintain that Peter always uses the word destruction to mean completely annihilate. And here’s the thing: Peter uses the same aforementioned greek words to describe the destruction of the world from the flood, that he uses to describe the describe the destruction of the ungodly. Compare these verses:

v6: “the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.”
v7: “the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.”
v9: “not wishing that any should perish”
v16: “which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction.”

Thus, if you wanted to say that the destruction of the ungodly must mean annihilation, then you’d need to say that the world was annihilated in Noah’s day – which is absurd. Or in other words: because the destruction of the flood was not a totally annihilation of being, neither will the destruction of the ungodly be total annihilation. It will be an everlasting and terrible time of torment.

So, to summarise: ‘destruction’ upon Christ’s return in the thought of 2 Peter 3 applies not to the present creation, but rather to the fate of the ungodly. This is important, because often this sort of language is imposed upon the Apostle’s letter to refer to the destruction of the present creation.

Further, destruction in the thought of the Apostle does not mean annihilation, but rather judgment and its consequences. The destruction of the ungodly and the destruction of Noah’s world are intimately linked such that it is absurd to insist upon an annhilation theory of hell taken from 2 Peter 3.

Now, what does this all mean for the continuity and discontinuity between this present creation and the next? I believe it may shed some light on the previous post’s question about the comparison between the water-judgment of Noah and the return-judgment of Christ.

Here’s the logic: if Peter doesn’t have annhilation in mind with his comparison between the destruction of the ungodly and the destruction of Noah’s world, it would seem a reasonable assertion that he does not have annhilation in mind in his comparsion between water-judgment of Noah and the return-judgment of Christ. Else, a continuity of being would apply to the reprobate, but also a complete discontinuity of being would apply to the present creation – which seems impossible. My point is that Peter’s Noah-based comparisons do not carry completely discontinuous notions of annhilation or obliteration. Without question, there is some level of discontinuity, but Peter’s comparisons carry a surprisingly strong level of continuity.

Granted, this is currently an assertion, but in the final post concerning the metaphor of Fire we shall see that this is the case. But for now, what is clear is that the coming of Christ is a terrifying reality. Judgment will be made on the ungodly and their destiny will be everlastingly awful. And in this light, I am overwhelmed with joy for the fact that in Christ’s first advent, He stood in my place condemned and suffered this for me. What a beautiful Saviour indeed!

Related posts:

1. Advent Thoughts #1: Water
2. Gunton and the Triune Creator
3. Confess or Die – Thoughts

In Christ and the Decree, Muller notices a tendency to for some modern (and now outdated) scholarship to grant Calvin a Christological focus, but deny the post-reformers a similar Christological focus. In other words, Calvin was Christocentric, and the post-Reformers were overtly mesmerized by the decree which grounds predestination. Or even, as some have oversimplified: Calvin vs. the Calvinists (see Paul Helm’s rebuttal here). As a historical theologian, Muller argues, that this is far too grand an assertion, and that the issues at hand are much more nuanced than the neo-orthodox school, or R.T. Kendall would like to imagine. The question is not whether Calvin is a scriptural theologian, and those Calvinists who came after him were speculative theologians, but what of Calvin’s thought was changed and improved within the context of key post-Calvinian theologians.

The introductory chapter of the book lays out the history of Reformation and Post-Reformation interpretation, by bringing attention to the reader the tendency of some scholars to search for a ‘central dogma’ in the thought of the Post-Reformation; a zeitgeist as it were.

So Muller maps out his course of action as twofold: 1) conduct an exposition of predestination and Christology in early Reformed orthodoxy, and 2) analyse their relationship to each other with respect to the soteriological matrix of the reformation theologian. In other words, the task is comparative dogmatics.

The first chapter concerns the theology of the great John Calvin. Because God is, among other attributes, infinite, omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent, and man is finite, and limited in knowledge, presence and power, Calvin asserts that man needs a mediator to bridge the gulf of creator and creature – this is Christ who is both infinite and finite; omniscient and limited, omnipresent and local, omnipotent and humanly-empowered. Thus, Calvin writes of Christ:

“Here is something marvellous: the Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that, without leaving heaven, he willed to be borne in the virgin’s womb, to go about earth, and to hang upon the cross; yet he continuously filled the world even as he had done from the beginning.” (Institutes, II.xiii.4)

This is what has been coined the extra Calvinisticum: finitum non capax infiniti (the finite cannot grasp the infinite). Therefore, we do not comprehend the divinity of the Son, but only its revelation in the flesh. This is important for Calvin because it means that we cannot seek to apprehend God apart from Christ, yet on the other hand, we cannot comprehend the hidden mind of God (e.g., comprehending predestination) because He is infinite.

With Calvin’s Christology, we see that he begins not with the hypostatic union of two natures in one person, but with the Anselmic need for a God-man to rescue us from our sins. This is interesting, because it means for Calvin, Christ as mediator is determinative of his person. Moreover, for Calvin, the proper ground for Christology is Christ-as-mediator, in other words: Soteriology. This is neither a ‘Christology from above’ nor a ‘Christology from below,’ but Christ-as-Mediator.

For Calvin, the 3-fold office of Christ’s work (Prophet, Priest and King) is determinative of the person of Christ; the unity of Christ’s person is bound to the unity of Christ’s work. Thus, the focus of the act of mediation is divine-human person, rather than the flesh assumed by the divine person. One of the implications of this for Calvin, is that a limiting factor of Soteriology is Christ’s work of intercession. The ascended Christ turns the Father’s gaze away from our sins and towards His righteousness, which means that in Calvin’s thought, and as per Romans 8:32-34, the extent of the atonement is coextensive with the scope of who Christ intercedes for.

In this chapter, Muller summarises the three points of contact between Christology and Predestination in Calvin:

1. The definition of election is “in Christ”
2. Predestination is only known in Christ
3. Christ is the author of election as is the Father.

And to finish, Muller summarises: “And just as his person, the agency, the center, and ultimately the content of revelation points back from the historical to the eternal trinitarian identity of God, so does his office as mediator, itself the fulfillment of the threefold mediation of the Old Covenant, point back from itself as medius, as midpoint, to the saving decree which he effects in the elect.” (p38).

I found this chapter quite a challenging read, but one which really spurred on a whole lot of thought. Calvin’s functional Christology is fascinating, and really shed some more light on how he, and perhaps the reformers I’ll discover in the coming weeks, defined the atonement. Moreover, it demonstrates that far from being speculative, the decree of predestination and its execution in time do not have a speculative bent in Calvinian theology. Soteriology is the focus, and Christ is at the center.

Related posts:

1. Calvin’s Contemporaries: Bullinger, Musculus & Vermigli
2. Calvin was not a “Calvinst”….
3. The Extra Calvinisticum